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They called him 'Climax Jim'

by Drew Gomber/Columnist for Vamonos!

Posted:
11/26/2012 01:35:38 PM MST

Past Tense

Before anyone gets any funny ideas about his nickname, 'Climax Jim' was called that because of his fondness for Climax Chewing Tobacco. Jim came to fame in Arizona in the late 1890s, for a number of reasons, primarily because he was likeable, entertaining and not considered to be especially dangerous. In short, he was the sort of outlaw that the public, and more importantly, newspaper writers, were able to take to heart.

For example, Jim, whose real name was actually Rufus Nephew, was on trial in 1907 for 'altering' and then cashing a check. Not exactly real 'bad-man' stuff, but still something that the average citizen balked at doing. Jim's attorney got into a shouting match with the prosecution and the focus of everyone in the courtroom, including the judge, was on the two lawyers. A street-wise kid from back East, Jim took the opportunity to grab 'Exhibit A' 'the offending check ' and cram it into his mouth, which was already full of chewing tobacco. After the judge managed to calm down the two volatile attorneys, he asked for Exhibit A to be presented, but lo and behold, it was nowhere to be found. After a thorough search 'although not so thorough that it occurred to anyone to search the defendant's mouth ' the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. As Jim ambled, in his amiable way, out of the courtroom, he spit into the judge's private spittoon, disposing of the evidence and having his own little joke in the process.

Beginnings

Eight years earlier, Climax Jim, who was a mere 22-years-old in 1899, was arrested for cattle theft in Graham County, Arizona.

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When the time for his trial came up, Jim, who seems to have had friends everywhere, produced a couple of them to swear that the crime was actually committed in Apache County. He never said he didn't do it, only that he didn't do it in Graham County. Jim was acquitted and then immediately arrested by officials in Apache County for stealing the very same cattle. At this trial, he produced witnesses who swore (Jim's friends seemed to consider perjury something of a non-crime) that the cattle were stolen in, you guessed it, Graham County. Both counties seem to have given up the chase on this one, possibly figuring that it was costing them more to prosecute this guy than stop him.

Jim first came to the attention of law enforcement officials in 1894, when he was 17. He had sold a dozen stolen steers to a slaughterhouse in Winslow. Catching him was never the problem. It was keeping him that seemed to befuddle authorities. In the case of Winslow, he used a pocketknife to tunnel his way out of the adobe jail. On another occasion, Jim tunneled out of the place of his incarceration using, of all things, a spoon.

On July 4, 1894, Jim was captured after 'celebrating the holiday' (in the words of Marshall Trimble, Arizona's official state historian and the main source for this story) by stealing a horse. As usual, he was easily captured in Pleasant Valley by County Sheriff John 'Rim Rock' Thompson, who promptly set off for Globe with the prisoner. But that night, when they camped, Climax Jim busted a link on the chain that held him to a post and escaped. After an exhausting chase, he was captured again just south of Globe.

It was from the jail in Globe that he escaped using the spoon, prompting locals to refer to him laughingly as 'The Spoon Kid.'

Appropriating a horse in Globe, Jim headed south, where he stole still another horse before being captured near Benson. This time, they sent him to the Yuma Territorial Prison. But then, it was only for a year. Jim's outlaw career was far from over. He would later boast that Yuma was the one place he could not escape from, and that does seem to have been the case. In the end, he was arrested and tried for various crimes a whopping 47 times, and one way or another, he always managed to get clear.

Next: Jim's adventures continue

SOURCES: THE OUTRAGEOUS CLIMAX JIM by Marshall Trimble and THE PERSONAL FILES OF THE AUTHOR.